[Photography] How to Use Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop to Make Your Landscape Images Pop

Photoshop is a wonderful tool if it is used correctly. Yes, there is a way to use it right. The basic idea is that if someone can see the adjustments you have made to your image, that’s not so good.

Think of Photoshop as your own personal darkroom. During the film era, some photographers had black and white darkrooms in their homes. That way, they could control the complete process of making the image. Very few had colour darkrooms, as that was far more complicated and costly. Nowadays, we have a fully functional colour darkroom loaded onto our computers (even our iPads), it’s called Photoshop or Lightroom (which is not named that by mistake, it is the opposite of darkroom). If you have Photoshop or Lightroom, you have a very powerful tool with which to edit your images.

Before

After

Making your images POP!

What does it mean to make your images pop? It can mean a number of things, but mostly it means to have more colour, contrast, and look more dramatic. As always, it implies that you have a good image to start with. Trying to make an average image pop, is not what this is about. Make sure you start off with a good image out of camera, then go through these steps in order.

Shoot in RAW

Shooting in RAW is a good start. I know, you may not want to shoot in RAW because the file sizes are so big, or you don’t really see the benefits, but RAW really does make a difference. Firstly, you are working with a full uncompressed file of data. A JPEG image has already had adjustments make in camera to compress it to that file size. Some information has already been discarded, which means you are working with less image information, which in turn means you have less flexibility in the editing process. Of course, RAW is only useful if you are going to spend time editing your images in Photoshop or Lightroom.

Let’s assume that you are going to edit and you have shot in RAW, open your image up in Photoshop and you will see the Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) Editor open. The ACR editor is a really powerful tool. The latest updates have made the ACR editor in Photoshop almost a separate image editing tool, it’s that powerful. As it opens, you will see a selection of tools on the right hand side, mostly sliders such as: White Balance, Tint, Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites, Blacks, Clarity, Vibrance and Saturation.

Camera Raw Editor in Photoshop CC

The camera raw editor has some very powerful adjustment tools. The next few steps will be done mostly in the RAW editor, then the image will be opened in Photoshop, and edited further. Many of these edits are very similar in the Lightroom Develop module, so you can make these same adjustments there as well.

The Camera Raw Editor in Adobe Photoshop CC

Close up of the basic RAW editor sliders

Making adjustments in the RAW editor

• Temperature – Start off by taking a look at the colour in your scene. You can adjust the temperature to make the colour of the scene warmer (slide towards yellow) or cooler (slide towards blue). This can be used to correct a colour cast, or to add some drama to your image. In this scene, I chose to move toward the warmer side.
• Exposure – Take a look at your exposure, the image might be a little dark, or maybe a little bright. Slide the exposure slider to adjust this.
• Contrast – Adjust the contrast to make sure that the dark areas of the image are dark enough, but don’t lose details here.
• Highlights – In this image, the red indicator in the highlights shows me where there is very little detail. To compensate for this, slide the highlights slider to the left. If your highlights are underexposed, slide this slider to the right, but be sure not to overexpose your highlights.
• Shadows – The shadows slider can help you bring back details in the shadows or darken them a little. Be careful not to overdo this slider as your shadows may look noisy (or your image can take on an “HDR” look) if you push this too hard.
• Whites – This slider adjusts any pixels in the image that are white or partially highlighted.
• Blacks – This slider will adjust any pixels that are black.
• Clarity – The clarity slider adjusts contrasts in the midtones. This can really add some structure to your image, but be careful not to overdo it.
• Vibrance – This slider will adjust any pixels that are not saturated. This is a good place to start to add some subtle pop to your scene.
• Saturation – This slider will adjust all pixels by saturating or desaturating them.

Basic adjustments in Camera RAW

HSL adjustments tab

This tab has three different tools under it, namely: Hue, Saturation, and Luminance (HSL). These adjustments will make changes based on the colour channels in your image. For example, if you click on the saturation tab, you can make the reds in your image more or less saturated, the same is true for the oranges and all the way through the colour channels. You can also make certain colours brighter, by using the luminance tab. In this image, I wanted to saturate the reds, yellows, and oranges, as well as some of the blues.

HSL tab adjustments

Graduated Filter in Camera Raw

Much like using one on your camera in the field, you can add a graduated filter in Camera Raw. The beauty about doing this in Photoshop is that you can make some very fine tuned adjustments to your image, depending on how you position the Graduated Filter tool.

Click on the Graduated Filter icon at the top of the screen, and the you will see a whole new dialogue box with very similar functions to the basic Camera Raw Module. The difference here is that you will click and drag the filter down on your image to select the sky. You can also click and drag up from the bottom to select the foreground. I will do both (theGraduated Filter applies to the image from the edge inward).

Starting at the top, I click and drag the filter to just over midway through my image. That limits the effect to the top half. This filter is graduated, so the effect will be properly blended, and you won’t see a hard line where the filter ends (the more you drag it the wider the blend area, you can also adjust that after). I make some adjustments and you can see the difference they made to the sky. Once you are finished with one filter, click on New (at the top of the adjustment box) and repeat the process, but drag up from the bottom this time to make adjustments to the foreground. Once you have made the final adjustments, you can click open image at the bottom of the Camera Raw box to open your image into Photoshop.

Graduated Filter icon highlighted

One key adjustment that needs to mentioned here is the Dehaze tool. The Dehaze tool does exactly what it says, it removes haze and creates better contrast. Use it carefully, it is easy to go too far with it, and your image may suffer as a result. It is a really useful tool for landscapes and seascapes, as there is often some haze in the images, as there was in mine. Using it lightly has removed the haze and made the image better overall.

You will notice it is part of the Graduated Filter tool, and there is also a Dehaze function in the effects tab of the Camera Raw Editor. It is up to you when you use it, but be aware that if you use it without a selection, it will apply the effect universally to your entire image. Using it here in the Graduated Filter tool means you can have better control over how it affects your image.

Click and drag the Graduated Filter from the top down to select the sky. Then select with adjustments you want to apply.

Selecting the foreground by dragging from the bottom up.

Open your image in Photoshop

After you have made your adjustments in Camera Raw, the final touches can be applied in Adobe Photoshop. Once again, the sky and the foreground in this image are going to look different, and will need different adjustments.

To make a softer selection of the sky, click on the quick mask tool at the bottom of the left hand side toolbar in Photoshop. You can then use a soft brush to paint in a selection of the sky as a mask. Once you are happy with the selection (see red mask) click on the quick mask tool again to activate that selection. There is one tricky thing to note about the quick mask tool, the mask means that you are selecting everything that is NOT red. So, when you click on the quick mask tool, you will see the marching ants around the bottom portion of the image and not the red area. This is good, because you can toggle between the two areas very easily and make adjustments to each selection.

First of all, make the necessary adjustments to the foreground using Levels. In this image, I wanted to make the foreground a bit brighter, so I popped up the highlights a little. From there I selected the inverse (i.e. the sky). You can do this by holding down CMD>SHIFT>I together. This will toggle your selection from the foreground to the background.

Red indicates the area that will be masked

The marching ants show where the current selection is in the foreground.

Making levels adjustments to the foreground

CMD>SHIFT>I will toggle the selection, here the sky is being selected and levels is being used to adjust the sky

Use Hue and Saturation to make final colour adjustments

You can use the toggle function (CMD>SHIFT>I) to select the sky and foreground interchangeably. Once you have your selection, choose a tool to make adjustments, and the changes will only be made to the area that is selected. In this example I have used the Hue and Saturation function to make further enhancements to the image. I am again making adjustments by each channel. This gives me great control over what colour ranges need to be saturated, and perhaps desaturate others that are a little over done. Go through each channel and make the necessary adjustments.

Use Hue and Saturation to make final colour adjustments

Once you are done, you can then sharpen your image as you see fit and save it to be printed. The steps outlined above will help you make any image look better. If done correctly, your images will have the pop and drama that you are looking for.

Give it a try, once you know the process, these adjustments can be done really quickly.

Final image

Please share your images and thoughts on the comments section below.

The post How to Use Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop to Make Your Landscape Images Pop by Barry J Brady appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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[Photography] How to Control and Modify Your Lighting With Flags

Lighting can be a complicated subject. From light sources, to modifiers, and color temperature, there are so many things to take into consideration. You probably know of many ways to alter your light with reflectors and diffusers.

However, what do you do when you have too much light, or the light isn’t behaving the way you need to produce your final image? You could start from scratch and choose a different light source and modifier, or you could opt for a different setup altogether. There is another way – flags.

Like diffusers and reflectors, flags are a tool that are used to control light. While diffusers control the shape and softness of light, and reflectors control the shape, intensity and direction (often acting as an additional light source), flags give you the ability to remove, or block light from your scene.

Another use of flags is to alter the size and shape of your modifier. For example you can block off a portion of a softbox to turn it into a striplight. They are also useful when working with reflective surfaces to control or block unwanted reflections.

This article will break down the basic use of flags to control where light falls in a scene. To do this, we’ll go through the step by step process of creating an image which employs the careful manipulation of a single light source.

The purpose of using a small, tabletop subject is so you can repeat the exact steps at home, in your own time.

What are flags?

At the most basic, flags are anything that can used to block or cut light from anywhere it isn’t wanted. Have you ever closed a blind or a curtain to block glare from a television screen? That blind is acting as a flag. Another example would be the sun visor in your car. What other examples can you think of? These instances from day to day life can help you figure out the use of flags much quicker.

Although you can use almost anything dark as a flag, the most common items are black paper and foamcore. Also, most 5-in-1 reflectors come with a black side that’s intended as a flag (see links above for some options).

Foamcore is one of the more useful things you can use, as it comes in a variety of thicknesses making it rigid, and it’s easy to cut to any shape and size you might need. It is also easily obtainable (visit any art supply store) and quite cheap.

Helpful things to have

As you will see in this demonstration, it can be very precarious to get your bits of foamcore to stay in place. An easy solution is to get a bunch of clamps to hold your flags. I cannot recommend this enough.

Other things that will help you position your flags include Blue-Tac, toothpicks, Popsicle sticks and tape.

Building an image

When you are working on an image that has many steps as part of the setup process, it’s important to take your time and build up your image one step at a time. Start with putting your subject in place and choosing your composition. From there, you can pick how you want to light it. Once those three things are in place, you can add or take away from the scene one step at a time, ensuring things are perfect before you move on to the next step.

Fun with flags

Step 1 – Set-up

As mentioned, this process will start with a wide crop to better illustrate how the light changes. The first task is to arrange the subject and light in the desired position, and calculate the exposure. For this shot, I intend to push the highlights of the subject to just below their limit, so the flags can be used to darken the background and achieve a very high contrast look in the final image.

Original setup, no flags used.

Step 2 – first flag for background control

Even though that is a good start, there are some things that can be done to improve this image. The first thing that needs to be tackled is the large negative space in the left hand side of the image. The background matches the subject in tone and color, so bringing down the exposure on the background will help to separate the two.

This is achieved by bringing in a large piece of black foamcore and holding it in front of the light. By watching where the shadows fall, you can figure out exactly where your flag needs to be to reduce the exposure on the background, without affecting your subject. Once that place is found, the flag can be mounted in place and another test shot taken.

First flag placed to strategically block light from falling on the background.

Notice how much darker the left side of the image is, but the exposure on the subject has not changed.

Step 3 – place second flag for further light control

With the left side darkened, the next bit of concern is the area of background to the right of and behind, the subject. Again, it’s a matter of bringing in a piece of foam core and moving it around while watching the shadows and making sure the subject is still lit. Once that’s achieved, clamp or hold the flag in place and take another test shot.

Step 4

With all the flags in place, this image isn’t quite finished. Because the background has been darkened so much, the shadow side of the subject now doesn’t stand out as much as it did in the initial setup. You can fix this with a reflector. In this case, I used a strip of white foamcore, just out of the frame to camera right. This fills in the shadows, creating an extra amount of separation between the subject and the background.

Final image

With these techniques, you are taking your time to build up a scene, and controlling every bit of light that your camera records. This control, when done right, should result in well crafted images that need very little attention in post-production. In this example, this image needed a small crop, a couple small local contrast adjustments, and a high pass filter. That took all of a minute to achieve, thanks to the amount of time spent working in camera.

Before flags and lighting control

Final image with the use of flags and a reflector to control the light, and minimal post-processing.

Moving on

Once you try this for yourself, you should quickly see how flags can be a huge help when trying to control lighting in your photography. Although this tutorial focuses on a small subject, flags can be used to great effect in all manner of genres where you have the opportunity to control light. This is especially true with portraiture. So, when you have the hang of it with a small subject, don’t be afraid to think bigger.

Please feel free to have a go at this technique yourself and share your questions and your results below.

The post How to Control and Modify Your Lighting With Flags by John McIntire appeared first on Digital Photography School.

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[Photography] How to Use Framing to Create a Sense of Scale

One thing that can be difficult to get across when taking pictures is a true sense of how large something is in real life. A skyscraper that appears towering and imposing in person, can come across as unimpressive, or stripped of its majesty when photographed. Natural formations that inspire awe and self-reflection, often seem puny and insignificant when we go through our photos later at home or on our phones.

This is something I have had happen many times in my own journey as a photographer, and while it can be tricky to create a sense of scale, there’s a way to use the concept of framing to capture the massive size of things in the world around you.

What is framing?

Framing has to do with the way the elements in a picture are positioned, in relation to one another. I struggled with the concept of framing for scale for a long time, before I really got the hang of it. But if you really want to show how big something is, it helps to put something else in the picture with it. This concept might seem a little counterintuitive, but adding elements to the foreground, background, or image sides, helps to not only give the viewer a sense of scale by showing how big the object is in relation to something else, but often it helps make the picture more compelling from a compositional perspective.

As an example, here’s a picture I took when I visited the Grand Canyon a few years ago. I really wanted to capture the sheer size of this natural wonder, so naturally I pointed my camera out from a precipice and took a few pictures. Sadly, the resulting images look flat, muddy, and downright boring – almost the polar opposite of the Canyon itself.

An incredibly boring picture of one of the most amazing natural formations I have ever seen.

The problem with this image is it does nothing to impart a sense of scale to the viewer. In order to truly appreciate how big the canyon is, we need other visual information in the frame, to which we may compare the background elements. Fortunately, one of my friends took a much better picture that includes a few foreground elements, which although they block out some of the Canyon, help to capture the grandeur of this natural wonder.

A much better picture, even though part of the Grand Canyon is blocked out.

The second picture works because it contains several layers: me, the trees, the plateau, and a glimpse of the rest of the Canyon. Of course this concept, like much in the world of photography, is quite subjective and some might think the top picture looks better because you can see more of the canyon itself. However, in my opinion the bottom image is more interesting because of the multiple compositional layers, while at the same time helping the viewer understand just how big the Grand Canyon really is.

How to apply framing to show scale

You can see the same principle at work in the following pair of shots as well. The first one was zoomed in a little and focused just on the crane, which is fine, but it doesn’t really tell the story of how big the crane is, or how much it towers over the surrounding buildings.

To adequately capture the size of this piece of construction equipment I stood in the same place, but zoomed out a little bit, in order to frame the crane between two of the surrounding buildings. The result is a picture that adds a great deal of additional context, which helps the viewer to understand the size of the subject in the photo.

Often these types of framing decisions are not all that complicated. It can be as simple as stepping a few meters in any direction, or zooming in and out with your camera. Another example is this set of two images taken at the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s a grand building with a rich history, but unless the building is properly framed it can look like any other house.

Looking at the above image you might get the idea that this dwelling is somewhat old, with a bit of a terrace in front. But, it doesn’t really capture a true sense of the scale, not only of the house, but its surrounding gardens.

In the second image (above), the size of the mansion is smaller in the image, yet it seems much larger because it is framed on the sides by rows of trees, as well as the lower portion of the photo which shows many distinct levels of the terrace. It’s somewhat ironic that stepping back and re-framing a shot like this, so that the subject is smaller in the frame, can actually make it appear larger. But, you will find this phenomenon to be true across a wide range of photographic situations in which you want to convey the true size of something.

Don’t overdo it

Of course, just as important as knowing how to frame your subjects is knowing when to hold back a little bit. The picture below shows the student union of Oklahoma State University, one of the largest student unions in the country. Yet when it is framed between two trees on the sides and a hedge in the foreground, it almost gets dwarfed and seems somewhat diminutive in size.

One reason the framing is not useful here is because it actually covers up part of the building, whereas in the previous example the technique was used enhance the large subjects. There are also several visual cues, such as windows and stairs, that on their own do a good job of imparting a sense of size to the viewer. To properly showcase how big this structure is, it’s enough to simply show it on its own.

The above examples are just a few illustrations of how you can use the idea of framing to capture a sense of scale, but I’m curious about your own personal approach. How do you use various photographic techniques to truly capture the size of your subject? Leave your thoughts and images in the comments below.

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